Go Go Garrett Hartley!

Posted by Benson

Some of you may know that I am a big Jimmy Graham fan, but so are a lot of people.  Jimmy is an awesome player, and one of if not the best tight ends in the NFL.  It is easy to like Jimmy Graham.

But I don't have a Jimmy Graham jersey.  I have a Garrett Hartley jersey.  I wear it every game, too.  Garrett Hartley is the Saints placekicker.  Thomas Morstead is our KOS and punter, and generally sees a lot more action in a game than Garrett.  Like Jimmy, Morstead is down and out one of the best players in the NFL in his position.  Apparently Hartley is no good at kicking off.

Garrett Hartley was down at number 29 on the list of field goal kickers last season.  Before we played San Francisco last week, Garrett was the third worst kicker in the league this season.

What? Come on, man...

But those are just numbers, right?  Whoever cared about the numbers?  Since when were sports all about numbers...

Garrett has a bad habit of shanking 30 yard field goals in his own dome, which tends to draw the ire and frustration of Saints fans.  He missed two field goals against the Bills this year, and one against the Cowboys, both in home games, and both games in which Garrett didn't make a single field goal.

Maybe it was the wind...

But if you look at the all-time records of NFL kickers, Garrett sits comfortably at number 23 with an impressive 82.292% accuracy in his 2008-2013 career thus far.  I daresay this percentage might startle more than a few Saints fans.  And according to Siri, the Saints "clobbered" the Bills 35 to 17 and "had their way with" the Cowboys with a final score of 49 to 17.

In short, we kicked the ever-living crap out of those teams, so it didn't matter one bit whether Garrett made his field goals or not.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is when poor Garrett runs into trouble. Maybe it's a confidence issue.  If you watch him before a kick, it always looks like he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders.  It almost looks like he'd rather be anywhere else on Earth, and the sense of relief on his face after a good kick is palpable.

There's no place like home, there's no place like home

But in the maddening, nail-biting game against the 49ers last week, we clawed victory away from the jaws of defeat with a final score of 23 to 20 with our final 6 points delivered affirmatively by none other than Garrett Hartley!  In fact, the game came down to the last two seconds, resting on Garrett alone, every Saints fan gripping their seats willing Hartley to give us the big W.

Holy crap! Did you see that?!? I made one!

In 2010, Hartley took us to the Superbowl with a 40 yard field goal in overtime against the Vikings, and then became the first kicker in NFL history to convert 3 field goals of 40 yards or more in a Superbowl game with field goals of 46, 40, and 47 yards against the Colts!

Y'all can't fire me now, right?

In short, Garrett brings it when he has to, and Saints fans everywhere need to believe in him!  Garrett is an awesome kicker that will be there for us when we need him to be.  He'll kick a 55 yard field goal if he has to (and if we put him on the right hash mark), and it doesn't matter how many times he shanks a routine kick in a game in which Brees, Jimmy, Colston, Thomas, and the rest of our guys are shredding the defense.

There's the game face! Suck it 9ers, Hartley's on the job!

I wear my Hartley jersey because I believe in Garrett Hartley.  I clap my hands whenever he kicks so that somehow, someway he knows that we all have confidence in him.  Like a storybook fairy, Hartley can perform magic, but only if you believe that it's real!